Tag: Thomm Jutz

New album release: Nothing But Green Willow

Martin Simpson and Thomm Jutz’s generation collaborates for their upcoming album Nothing But Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry, out September 29, 2023. Courtesy photo, used with permission.

Martin Simpson is an English folk musician and guitarist, known for his innovative and eclectic approach to traditional music. In the mid-1980s, Simpson moved to the United States, where he came to the attention of a wide range of American artists with whom he then collaborated. Amongst the albums released during his US tenure, Cool & Unusual, won the Indie Award for best instrumental album in 1998. In addition to his work as a musician, Simpson has also been involved in music education, teaching at universities, and leading workshops and masterclasses around the world. (IV-PR, 2023)

Raised in the Black Forest of Germany, Thomm Jutz has become an American roots music treasure. His virtuosity, eloquence, and clarity of expression have made him a linchpin of Nashville’s creative community, and in 2020 his To Live in Two Worlds, Volume 1 was nominated for the Best Bluegrass Album Grammy, making him the first immigrant to receive a nomination in that category. He has written numerous Bluegrass number ones, and his songs have been recorded by John Prine, Nanci Griffith, The SteelDrivers, Balsam Range, and more. Jutz has a Master’s degree in Appalachian Studies from East Tennessee State University and wrote his thesis on Grammy-winner Norman Blake.

When Thomm Jutz got together with his latest trans-Atlantic collaborator, Martin Simpson, the pair bonded over their long-running obsession with Cecil Sharp’s 1916 and 1918 collection, “English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians;” particularly those tunes from singers Mary Sands and Jane Gentry. The longevity of the original songs drew the pair in but the latest single from their upcoming album Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs Of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry, pulls from generations of different versions of “The Wagoner’s Lad.”

Folk Alley gave fans an exclusive first listen to the single, writing, “Jutz’s and Simpson’s gem-like version shines in all its facets.” Fans can pre-save Simpson and Jutz’s version of “The Wagoner’s Lad,” check out the previously released album track “Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies” featuring Cara Dillon, and pre-order or pre-save Nothing But Green Willow ahead of its September 29 release via Topic Records.

Simpson and Jutz both clearly see the crucial need for each new generation to reinvent these folk songs. “I strongly believe that innovation requires preservation,” says Jutz. “How can we claim to play traditional music or write ‘Folk music’ without knowing the roots of it?” Fortunately for all involved, the pair found a host of others in agreeance and brought together a mix of roots artists from both sides of the pond—Sierra Hull, Angeline Morrison, Odessa Settles, Tim O’Brien, Tammy Rogers, Seth Lakeman, and more—to create an homage to the bridge from Appalachia to England and back, just as the songs of Sands and Gentry originally did.

Nothing But Green Willow track list:
“Fair Annie” feat. Emily Portman
“Geordie” feat. Sierra Hull & Justin Moses
“Pretty Saro” feat. Odessa Settles
“Edward” feat. Seth Lakeman
“Edwin in the Lowlands Low” feat. Tim O’Brien
“Jacob’s Ladder” feat. Dale Ann Bradley & Tim Stafford
“Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies” feat. Cara Dillon
“The Wagoner’s Lad” feat. Martin Simpson
“Married and Single Life” feat. Tammy Rogers
“The Gypsy Laddie” feat. Thomm Jutz
“The Suffolk Miracle” feat. Angeline Morrison
“I Whipped My Horse” feat. Fay Hield
“Awake! Awake!” feat. Thomm Jutz

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New album release: Lost Voices – Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz

Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz pay tribute to those who ‘Still Had So Much To Say’ on their new album Lost Voices now out via Mountain Fever Records. Courtesy photo, used with permission.

When long-time friends, mutual admirers, and heavily respected bluegrass musicians Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz started accumulating a catalog of co-written songs during Covid lockdown and beyond, it only made sense to get these inspired, well-crafted stories recorded for the rest of the world to hear and enjoy. Retreating to Jutz’ log cabin studio outside of Nashville with a crew of like-minded greats including Shaun Richardson on mandolin, Ron Block on banjo, Tammy Rogers on fiddle, and Mark Fain on bass, Stafford and Jutz cut fourteen of their songs to create an album of tunes that the beloved, late music writer and historian Peter Cooper called “Songs that bring American history—mountain culture, steam trains, vaudeville, race, baseball, strife, and grace—to technicolor life.” The album is called Lost Voices, and it is out now on Mountain Fever Records. (Tim Stafford/Thomm Jutz, 2023)

From Callie Lou, a song based on a scene from Harriette Arnow’s The Doll Maker that features Dale Ann Bradey on vocals; to the story of Negro League heroes, The Elizabethton Blue Grays, brought to life by the dedicated research of Jacey Augustus and the Cedar Grove Foundation; to the amazing story of the now-recognized Navajo heroes of the battle of Iwo Jima in Code Talkers; to The Queen and Crescent which is full of the alluring jargon from the golden era of America’s railroads; Lost Voices is all in tribute to what the longtime Blue Highway guitarist (Stafford) and the long-respected Nashville songwriter and session man (Jutz) call “the lost voices that still had so much to say.”

After calling both Stafford and Jutz “master guitarists and writers,” the aforementioned Cooper described Lost Voices: “These are new kinds of bluegrass songs, informed by mutual heroes Tony Rice, Norman Blake, John Hartford, and Gordon Lightfoot, yet not beholden to any prior influence, other than the influence of the American experience.”

Fans can stream or purchase Lost Voices.

Lost Voices track list:
Take That Shot
Enough To Keep You Going For A While
The Blue Grays
The Ballad Of Kinnie Wagner
Callie Lou
The Wild Atlantic Way
No Witness In The Laurel But The Leaves
Vaudeville Blues
Code Talker
The Standing People
The Queen And Crescent
High Mountain Rising
Revolutionary Love
Lost Voices

Mountain Fever Records is proud to announce the signing of Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz; two of the most prominent and prolific songwriters in bluegrass music, for the release of their forthcoming duo project, Lost Voices. Their love for history, vintage guitars, and well-crafted songs brought the two together five years ago. “I’m such an admirer of Tim’s writing, singing, and playing. Making a duo record with Tim was a logical step and a dream come true for me,” notes Jutz. Stafford says, “Thomm is such a great, unique writer, player, and singer – we connected and found so many ideas that spoke to us both. Recording was a breeze!”

New album: Surely Will Be Singing by Tammy Rogers and Thomm Jutz

Surely Will Be Singing is the new album by Tammy Rogers and Thomm Jutz, available now everywhere. Photo: Tammy Rogers and Thomm Jutz

Parallel creative paths and a singular chance meeting of Tammy Rogers and Thomm Jutz are the origins of the duo’s forthcoming album, Surely Will Be Singing which released on January 21 via Mountain Fever Records. Bluegrass and Americana fans are treated to the album’s final single, “Long Gone”—available to stream everywhere at this link. Rogers named the song, taking the classic bluegrass train theme and turning it on its head. (Tammy Rogers/Thomm Jutz, 2022)

“In my mind, ‘Long Gone’ is set in the 1920s, a time of great social movement and upheaval. I picture a young man from the country who is either going to catch the train his lover is on, or stay left behind. What’s he going to do? Stick with the old or go somewhere new? This song is a reminder to all of us that no matter what we do, time is short, and we had better get to doing what we’re supposed to do.” – Thomm Jutz.

Surely Will Be Singing is a twelve-song collection selected from the 140+ songs King and Jutz have written over the years. “We’d always talked about making a duo record,” Jutz says. “We’re both very serious about what we do but we’re also very easygoing in the way we approach things. That’s at the heart of how we write. We’re both willing to see where things naturally go. I love that because at the end of the day, we usually wind up with something I wouldn’t have come up with on my own.” Rogers adds.

Previously, Rogers and Jutz released “The Tree of Life,” another single from the album which explores the concept of duality, something the duo were discussing after having read the writing of Joseph Campbell. Fans can hear “The Tree of Life” now at this link.

When Tammy Rogers was around five years old, her family moved from Rogersville, Tennessee, to Texas. Her father bought her a three-quarter size fiddle a few years later and it immediately became an extension of herself. Along with playing and touring with her family’s bluegrass band, she absorbed the music of her grandmother’s records whenever she would travel back to Tennessee in the summertime. Rogers landed her big break when she was hired to play fiddle in Patty Loveless’ band in 1990. Later in that decade, she co-founded one of Nashville’s earliest alt- country indie labels, Dead Reckoning Records. In 2016, Rogers won her first Grammy with the SteelDrivers for their album, The Muscle Shoals Recordings, which was awarded best bluegrass album.

Thomm Jutz’ pivotal moment came when he watched Bobby Bare singing “Detroit City” and “Tequila Sheila” on a German television show. That epiphany set him on a course of learning to play guitar and seeking out as many bluegrass and folk records as he could. After writing songs for the bands he formed in high school, Jutz began to study the craft. Following his lifelong dream, and inspired and encouraged by his mentor, songwriter Richard Dobson, Jutz moved to Nashville in 2003. Now firmly established as a producer, musician, and songwriter, Jutz received his first Grammy nomination, in the Best Bluegrass Album category, for his 2020 set, To Live in Two Worlds, Vol. 1. He has written or co-written innumerable bluegrass radio hits, recorded by artists like John Prine, Balsam Range, and The Steeldrivers and most recently, in 2021, Jutz was named IBMA’s songwriter of the year.